There are some images that have the power to freeze the moment, to capture a glance, to fix an instant for eternity. One of these is the famous painting Miss La La at the Circus Fernando created by Edgar Degas in 1879. It is an artwork where the French Impressionist painter records for an instant the extraordinary grace and beauty of the circus artist Anna Albertine Olga Brown. As many years later Wim Wenders did with his angelic trapeze artist Marion in the film Wings of Desire, so Degas made Miss La La the subject of one of his most original and surprising paintings, capturing her in one of her most surprising and dangerous exercise: when, suspended from a rope clamped between her teeth, she twirls towards the circus ceiling. Of all the other works exhibited at the Fourth Impressionist Exhibition in Paris in April 1879, a few weeks after its completion, the painting is undoubtedly one of the most audacious and uncompromisingly modern. Assembled for this exhibition, a significant set of Degas's preparatory drawings will show him at work, observing and drawing this extraordinarily talented model. An exhibition that is part of the free Discover series organized by the National Gallery in London to deepen the knowledge of individual masterpieces from its collections.
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